Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine

"Look, mother--look at those poor Lefroys!" cried Miss Ethel Challice, the banker's daughter, as she drives past in her elegantly appointed C-spring landau, perfectly gloved, veiled, and shod. "Aren't they awful? Not a pair of gloves among them! And their boots--elastic sides--what my maid wouldn't wear! Patched at the toes, too! You would never say they were ladies, would you?" "Poor children! They have no mother, you know, darling, and a bad, bad father." "Oh, yes, I know! But he was such a handsome, attractive man! Don't you remember, mother, at Ascot, three years ago, when he asked us to lunch on his drag, and introduced me to Lord Squanderford, how fascinating we all thought him?" Mrs. Challice shrugs her portly shoulders. "Fascinating, but thoroughly unprincipled, my dear. I do pity his poor children. What will become of them, thrown destitute on the world? Well, I have nothing for which to blame myself. I tried to do my best for them; but--whether it was from want of manner or through senseless pride I can not tell--Miss Lefroy did not respond to my attempted civility, and the last day I called--about a year ago--I saw the whole family flying from the house across the wilderness like a crowd of scared savages, when the carriage stopped at the hall door." "Oh, it was all want of manners, of course, mother dear! That poor girl would not know how to receive a visitor or enter a drawing-room. She has never been in any society, you know. All the county people have left off calling on them too; they treated them just in the same way that they treated you. They're perfect savages!" "The second girl promises to be rather good-looking." "Do you think so? She's too gypsified for my taste--looks as if she would be in keeping at a country fair, with a tambourine and a scarlet cap." "She's a remarkably good-looking girl--that's what she is," Mr. Percy Challice puts in, with a knowing smile--"steps out like a thoroughbred, she does. 'Twould be well for you, my dear sister, if you had her action on the pavement." "So I could have, if I wore boots and skirts like hers," retorts Miss Ethel sullenly. "Then I'd strongly advise you, my dear, to get the address of her milliner and bootmaker at once." CHAPTER III. "I say, Pauline, is that Miss Rossitor going in at No. 3? It's just like what I remember of her dear old-maidish figure. I know she was expected home this month." "Poor old Rossitor!" laughs Pauline. "Do you remember, Addie, the long mornings she used to spend trying to make Bob and you understand the difference between latitude and longitude?" "I remember," answers Addie, with a sigh, "that she was wonderfully patient and painstaking with us, and I wish now with all my heart that I had profited more by her teaching. Pauline, I think I'll just run in and see if it is she. You and Lottie can return and let auntie know where I am." Miss Rossitor, a neat bright-eyed little woman of thirty-five, daughter of a deceased clergyman, had, some three years before, undertaken the education of Colonel Lefroy's neglected children, spending three or four hours every morning in their dilapidated school-room. She had become much attached to her unruly pupils, and it was with sincere regret that she had to give them up and go abroad as resident governess in a French family, being very poor herself, and finding it impossible to get her quarterly applications for salary attended to by the gallant but ever-absent colonel. "You old dear!" cries Addie, kissing the little lady vehemently. "It is you, really! I'm so glad to see you again! When did you arrive? How did you manage to get leave?" "I arrived last night; mother did not expect me for another week. I managed to get leave, because, most fortunately--I mean unfortunately--well, well"--with a beaming smile--"we won't try to qualify the circumstance--at any rate, one of my pupils had a bad attack of rheumatic fever, and was ordered to some German baths for a couple of months, and, as the family have accompanied her, I got leave for the time being. Now let me have a look at you, my dear Addie. Well, to be sure, what an immense girl you have grown! But your face has not changed much. And all the others--the boys--I suppose they have shot up too? Three years do make a difference, do they not?" "Rather!" cries poor Addie, lugubriously plunging at once into the subject of her woes. "It has made an immense difference to us. Oh, Miss Rossitor, you left us three years ago the happiest, the most contented and united family under the sun--you return, to find us the most miserable, destitute outcasts in England! Oh, oh!" "There, there, child; don't give way so, don't, dear! Tell me all your troubles, Addie; it may lighten them for you. I don't know anything about you clearly: mother has not had time to tell me yet; we've had visitors all the morning." "There--there is little to tell. About two months ago we were turned out of Nutsgrove. Every article of furniture was sold by auction--even--even mother's wedding-presents--and the place was bought by Tom Armstrong, the great vitriol and chemical manure man of Kelvick. That's the whole story." "But your--your father, child! What of him? Surely he did not allow--" "He--he--did nothing. He mortgaged every stick to the place, and did not even pay the interest on the money raised." "And, Addie, where is he now?" "I don't know," she answers drearily--"in America somewhere, I believe; he disappeared nearly three years ago. He backed the wrong horse for the Derby, just ran down here for half an hour, burned some papers in his study, kissed us all round, and went away. We never heard from him afterward--at least, not directly." "But surely he can not have deserted you altogether--have left you five children totally unprovided for?" "He left us with a capital of four pounds fifteen between us--four pounds fifteen--not a penny more! And we have had nothing from him since; and yet the Scripture tells us to honor our parents!" "Hush, child--hush! We must not question the commands of Holy Writ. Why, if it comes to that, women are ordered to love, honor, and obey their husbands; and, oh, my dear, my dear," continues the little woman, the corkscrew ringlets of her frisette nodding with impressive emphasis, "if you could only have seen or heard the men some women are called upon to honor--to honor, mind you--why, you--" "Ah, but that is different, quite different! A woman has the power of choosing her husband; if she selects the wrong man, there is no one to blame but herself. But a child can't choose its own father; if it could, you may be sure poor Bob wouldn't have selected one who would rob him of his patrimony and cast him penniless on the world without even the resource of education." "Come, Addie dear, are you not too severe on your father? He has had many temptations, has been unfortunate in his speculations; but, when he knows the state you are in, you may be sure he will make an effort to help you--probably send for you all and give you a home in the new world." Addie does not reply at once; a sudden wave of color floods her soft face, and she says hurriedly-- "After all, why shouldn't I tell you? I--I dare say you will hear it from some one else; I--I suppose half the county knows it." "Knows what, dear?" "That our father has abandoned us altogether--that he has other family-ties we--we knew nothing of--" "Addie, my dear, what are you talking of?" "He did not leave England alone, Miss Rossitor," she answers excitedly; "he asked none of us to go with him, but he took two other children we had never heard of, and a--a wife. I believe she was an actress at a London theater--" "My dear child," interrupts Miss Rossitor, much flurried and shocked, "where did you hear all this? Who told you? Do the others know?" "No; I did not tell them--I don't mean to do so. I heard it all one day accidentally. Aunt Jo and Lady Crawford were discussing it; they did not know I was behind the curtain. My dress was all torn, and I didn't want Lady Crawford to see me, so I hid there, and--and was obliged to hear it all." Poor Addie's crimson face sinks upon her outstretched arm; for a time she sobs bitterly, refusing to be comforted. However, a cup of tea has a somewhat soothing effect, and after a time she resumes her tale of desolation: "When he went, poor Aunt Josephine came to take care of us--you know she was our mother's eldest sister, a maiden lady who lived with a widowed childless niece in a pretty little house at Leamington, where everything was peace and quietness and neatness--three things Aunt Jo loves better than anything else on earth; nevertheless she stayed on with us ever since, and has supported us on her annuity of eighty pounds a year." "Supported six of you on eighty pounds a year! I can't believe that, Addie!" "And yet it is true. We did not have dinners _à la Russe_, you understand, nor did we get our frocks from Paris, and the boys had to give up their schooling; but we managed to rub along somehow, and were happy enough, all except poor aunt, who has never enjoyed a peaceful hour since she left Leamington. We had the house, you know, and the garden, which was stocked with fruit and vegetables; there was an old cow too, and a few hens, who laid us an egg occasionally. Oh, we didn't mind--we got along famously! But now--now Heaven only knows what is to become of us!" "My poor, poor child," exclaims Miss Rossitor, with tears in her voice, "this is too sad! Something must be done. You have some other relatives to help you? Where are you staying now?" "I'll tell you all about it. When we left Nutsgrove, two months ago, we took up our quarters at Sallymount Farm, belonging to Steve Higgins, who was a stable-boy in grandfather's time, and who married our old nurse Ellen Daly. She had some spare rooms, and she asked us to use them while we looked about us and decided what was to be done. We began by sending round the hat, as Bob calls it, to all our kith and kin. You know in the old days we seemed to have a lot of prosperous relatives; I remember, when I was a small child, a whole band of cousins stopping at Nutsgrove for the Kelvick races, with their maids and valets. And so we thought, for the sake of the family name, they would help us; but--but somehow the hat failed to reach them; they seemed to have moved on, to have vanished into space--they weren't to be found, in fact." "But there is Mrs. Beecher of Greystones, your father's half-sister. She couldn't possibly overlook you." "No, she couldn't well, living within twenty miles and having no children of her own. She and the admiral came over and reviewed us _en masse_, and, I believe, were nervously indisposed for days afterward--the admiral had to swallow half a bottle of sherry before he recovered from the shock of our combined comeliness. They stayed an hour, and said as many disagreeable and insulting things during that time as we had ever heard in our lives before. However, the upshot of their visit was that Aunt Selina offered to send away her companion, Miss McToadie, and take Pauline in her place. Aunt Jo closed with her at once, not giving poor Polly a voice in her fate; and so she is to go over to Greystones the day after to-morrow. Poor, poor Polly!" "Well at any rate, she is sure of a home. The Beechers will eventually adopt her; and they are very rich people. You should not pity her, Addie; it would be very injudicious," says Miss Rossitor sagely. "Oh, I didn't to her face! Adversity is teaching me wisdom, I can tell you. After that, Robert was put up in the market, and found wanting in capacity for commercial or professional pursuits, so an old relative